Halp:Skins
A skin is the style which is applied over the top of a wiki page's content. The content itself is not changed by the skin in which it appears, but the colors, design, and navigation of the page can be very different from one skin to another. The skin used in new Wikia sites is Monaco. It is currently available in six default color themes: Sapphire, Slate, Smoke, Beach, Brick, and Gaming. The skin can also be completely customized, or details of the default themes can be tweaked, using stylesheets. See for details. The Monaco skin allows for extensive customization of the flyout side menu, and the drag-and-drop elements of the sidebar (including numerous useful ) can be arranged to suit the user's preferences. Some older Wikia are still using the previous default skin, Quartz, which had a wide menu on the right, and was the first skin to support widgets. A few are are still using Monobook: this is the same skin used by Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects, but it does not support the modern features of Monaco and Quartz. (Older sites may be upgraded to Monaco by .) If you are logged in, you can change your own personal view of Wikia pages by choosing your favorite skin in your . For instance, if you choose Quartz in your preferences, you will see all Wikia sites in Quartz, even if the wiki's default skin is set to Monaco or something else. (Unregistered users may use the "switch to" links below and their choice will be saved in a cookie.) Some communities spend a lot of time customizing their modern skins with custom menus, colors, and more. If your personal preferences are set differently from the site's default, especially if you use an older skin, you might miss out on some of the wiki's customization and features. Therefore, we recommend checking the box labeled "Let the admins override my skin choice" in Preferences. Your favorite skin will show on all standard, un-customized wikis, but sites who have made the extra effort will be seen the way their community intends. How do skins work? Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) code can be put in several places to affect the display of a Wikia. The core stylesheet (Main.css) that is part of the MediaWiki software determines the default look of the site. Specific design details can be customized on a particular wiki by editing MediaWiki:Common.css, which affects all users of the site, no matter what skin they are using. Code placed in Common.css is usually aimed at customizing the display of the content area, not the navigation or colors belonging to a skin. This is because the classes and ids for displayed objects outside the content area can be very different from skin to skin, and adding skin-specific code to Common.css can slow down page load times. Details inherited from Main.css and Common.css can, in turn, be affected by changes to the site-wide skin stylesheets. Monaco is the default skin for Wikia installations, and MediaWiki:Monaco.css is the place where can add customization. Admins can also customize stylesheets for the older skins at MediaWiki:.css although only those few users who have changed skins in their preferences will see the effects. Can I customize my own view? If you are , you can change your own personal view of Wikia pages by choosing your favorite skin in your . If you'd like even more control than that, you customize your view (without changing the look for everyone) by editing your user stylesheet to add CSS code to change the site's fonts, colors, positions of links in the margins, and many other things. Continuing down the "cascade" of stylesheets, details from Main.css, Common.css and .css are overridden for you only by code placed in the user stylesheet (or the User:USERNAME/.css file for any other skin). This is also a great place to test and refine design ideas without disturbing others, before transferring them to a site-wide stylesheet. For more information and ideas, see . You can learn more about CSS options and syntax at one of the many CSS tutorial pages on the web. Skins available :Note that some of these skins are provided for historic reasons only. They do not support all of the newer features provided in Monaco. See also * Skins Skins